A Little Sugar For Christopher
by Heimchen
Summary: It's three years later and Christopher has kept his promise. Wikus and Tania, reunited and blissfully happy, insist upon thanking him in their own very special, very human way. Prawns to the rescue plus silly smut and nothing but. You have been warned.
1. Part I

Sometimes, even twenty-plus years of coexistence just isn't enough to promote any real understanding between species…

Lukewarm warning: With the exception of a few words best described as 'coarse' and Wikus's ubiquitous 'fooks', anyone can read Part I of this story without any risk of being corrupted. The 'M' rating is only for some explicit though cryptically-written smut contained within the latter half of Part II, which'll get going slowly enough that you can safely bow out beforehand whenever it gets to be too much for you. If you're only interested in the rescue portion of the story and want to know how it ends without dealing with the smut, just skip on ahead to 'The End' once you've had your fill of what goes on in Part II, count up exactly six paragraphs to the one which begins with 'All the accused…', and there you go!

Disclaimer: All legal rights connected with District 9 belong to its creators and distributors. The following fanfic was created solely for entertainment purposes and to have some fun with my favourite new alien squeeze.

A LITTLE SUGAR FOR CHRISTOPHER – PART I

Christopher Johnson watched the little human hustle up and bow and scrape and make an obsequious nit of himself.

"There you go, sir, Mister Johnson, sir," he said as he swung open the limousine door and bared his teeth in a smile of hideously overwrought proportions. Christopher didn't know which was worse, the constant overt hostility he'd known back in the District 9 days or this new false civility prompted by the humans' apprehension and terror.

The big arthropoid got in without a word. The vehicle's interior was oversized and offered plenty of headroom, but he still had to cant his large antennae sideways at an awkward angle—they always forgot about his antennae. A small window in the tinted shielding separating his compartment from the driver up front slid aside and the human liaison Christopher had been assigned looked back at him anxiously. It was well and proper that the man appear anxious, Christopher thought; the man was MNU. But still the alien said nothing for he knew that the pool of humans who were fluent in his language was still very limited. MNU had kept a jealous stranglehold on his people for a very long time.

Christopher held out a scrap of paper with human writing on it. "This address. I wish to go there," he said. The liaison took it, looked at the address, did a double-take, looked at Christopher and seemed about to speak, then thought better of it and slid the window shut without comment. Christopher leaned back into the soft upright of his seat, relieved. He was in no mood to explain himself, nor was he much enthused about the social call he was about to make.

The black limousine slid smoothly forward through the even blacker night, a night swept here and there by flaring searchlights. The beams made pretty latticework of the perimeter fencing and glinted off the coils of razor wire…razor wire, again, yet Christopher knew that this too was necessary. The military compound was simply the safest place in which to house him whenever he stayed on Earth and the humans had become nothing if not paranoid about his safety and well-being. Even now he could see it in their departure through a discreet side gate away from the main entrance, the two bigger vehicles which hooked up once outside the base and which tried to appear innocuous as they trailed a useful distance behind. The small convoy began a circuitous route through the undeveloped countryside hugging the nearby suburbs. The road was deserted. Rural dark closed in around them.

Christopher powered his window down for some fresh air and to look outside unimpeded. There was very little natural light and it was hard to see, even though his nocturnal vision was excellent. He angled his gaze upward. The planet's one moon was nowhere in sight and most of the stars were missing. They were hidden behind the hulls of dozens of serenely floating colony ships.

The ships were there because of Christopher, of course. His cry for help, so long delayed, had been heard and acted upon before he even made it all the way back to Homeworld. Miners working an asteroid belt near the Galaxy's edge had detected his ship as he limped past and sent the usual friendly greetings. When their hails went unanswered, they'd become suspicious and went after him, and were astounded to discover a colony ship long presumed lost with all aboard being flown by a single adult prawn and his nymphal offspring. By the time the two vessels reached their home planet, a rescue mission was already being organized by order of some very irate supreme leaders.

It was reflective of Christopher's humble nature that he was astonished to find himself and his son hailed as heroes. He'd thought he'd be censured for taking so long to get the emergency command module operational and reunited with the mothership. Instead, he was evaluated and reclassified as a valid member of the higher castes and promoted into the shipmaster trade with an officer's grade. His child, Little CJ, was also tested. The mysterious changes which had awoken Christopher's latent intellect and skills had gone gene-deep and he'd bred true. Little CJ was proclaimed pure high-caste with an aptitude for the same profession as his father. Christopher was delighted by the prospect of having his son nearby for the rest of his life, first working as his apprentice and underling, and later, as his colleague. All the hardships he'd suffered, all his agonizing and misgivings blew away as so much chaff on the wind whenever he thought about it.

But first, there were the prawns on Earth to rescue and Christopher had wanted Little CJ nowhere near that planet ever again. CJ was still young enough to know a child's joy at discovering his heritage and would remain on Homeworld. Christopher joined the crew of the colony ship leading the expedition. The trip back would be much less harrowing and lonely than his escape away from Earth. For the first time in a very long while, Christopher was surrounded by peers and potential friends who shared his interests and concerns and who were happy to help him learn his new duties and complete his training.

He was also placed on the ship's advisory council—another humbling development. Members of the advisory council, normally older, highly experienced high-caste officers, had direct access to the leadership caste and were tasked to offer their wisdom and expertise to assist the leaders in making their decisions. Christopher's unique knowledge was in high demand. Again and again he was asked to recount what he knew of the humans and how they thought, the sort of repercussions which might have befallen his kin left behind and what he believed the humans would do when he returned.

"They will expect us to come in force, I think," Christopher told them. "When humans turn primitive and violent, they expect violence in return."

"Oh, we'll come in force all right," said one of the leaders, with dangerous glee.

And that was just what they'd done, enter Earth's atmosphere with a good third of their ships, while the remainder were instructed to wait until needed in geostationary orbit above the North Pole, low enough that anyone with decent eyesight could see the twinkling new constellation of doom which had engulfed the Pole Star. The incoming ships flew even lower, just high enough to clear the tops of the Alps as they swept down over the Mediterranean.

The humans tried only twice to stop them. One moron country fired a missile at the armada when it first began to cross the coastline of Africa. The missile mysteriously exploded long before it reached the alien ships and the only people who were hurt by the falling debris were an oblivious old lady out walking her overweight pug dog and two UFO loons who were dancing around in their backyard, holding up Bristol board signs with crudely scrawled messages of welcome on them. A second country, even stupider, also fired a missile, which somehow got turned around and briskly returned to its point of origin, whereupon it blew itself and all the other waiting missiles up, creating a truly spectacular fireball and the stupid country's largest new landfill site. That was the end of any organized resistance. By the time the armada settled into a parking hover directly above District 10, the last of the compound's human shepherds and jailers had already long since fled.

Finding Wikus van de Merwe would be a lot harder, Christopher had thought. Even if he were still alive, there was a good chance he'd lost his human identity and would be unaware of who he'd once been. But only two days after their arrival, Wikus proved Christopher dead wrong by staggering out of the bush close to District 10's north-most perimeter line and promptly handing himself over to the guards patrolling there. Christopher, notified at once, had rushed to the scene and was directed to the guards' main assembly shelter. The slight, grey-green refugee he'd found resting there, exhausted and foot-sore, was unknown to him in appearance but his scent was not. He'd recognized his unique odour at the same time the stranger recognized him and struggled back up onto his feet.

"Christopher!" he'd cried and lurched forward. Christopher caught him before he fell. He held the smaller prawn tightly as Wikus began to shake and wail, frightening the guards who'd brought him in. One, who was a bit of a hypochondriac worried about catching alien germs, inquired whether the stranger was sick and having convulsions.

"No, he is only trying to weep. It is a human thing," Christopher explained gently and then just stood, patient and enduring, while Wikus sobbed out three years' worth of misery and frustration and fear against his stalwart chest.

It turned out that Wikus had never even resided in District 10. Afraid of the MNU agents hunting him and unsure of his acceptance by the other prawns, he'd chosen to live like a wild thing, first hiding within the deserted remnants of District 9 and later, when the bulldozers came, on the outskirts of Johannesburg's ritzier suburbs, where he could usually count on scrounging enough to stay alive. Despite his feral, hardscrabble existence, he'd done quite well on his own—surprisingly well, really—and was in good enough condition to begin his reverse-transformation at once. Christopher was there to watch as Wikus began the procedure. The last thing he did before drifting off under the influence of the drugs was to drowsily turn his prawn face towards Christopher and whisper, "Thank you."

The next time Christopher saw the man was when the transformation was about halfway complete. He'd looked awful, with pieces of exoskeleton falling off everywhere and bruised human flesh blossoming up beneath the bloody oozing welts left behind, and the pain had been so intense that Wikus had been kept unconscious most of the time. Yet still he seemed pleased and chipper and tried to stretch his raw changing mouth into a smile when he saw his friend.

"A right horror show, ay? But I'm getting there. It's working, just like you said." He held up one trembling, dripping hand. "See that? Two more fingers already. Never thought I'd be so glad to see a fooking pinky."

Wikus coughed, a horrid liquid bubbling sound. His respiration was still transitioning between his book gills and the new lungs forming within. Christopher patted him gingerly on one shoulder, full of sympathy and admiration for the human's sheer capacity for suffering.

"It will soon be over," he soothed. "The doctors say your mind was untouched."

"Ja, that's the main thing. I remember everything. Everything." His breathing eased and he closed his eyes. "Some of it was bad, Christopher. So bad. Even after you left."

"Hush. Rest. Save it for the trial."

"I will…" Then his sense of humour reasserted itself and he grew brighter. "My father-in-law won't be happy to see me, ay?"

"No, I expect he won't be," Christopher agreed.

"Good. Hope the bloody prick shits himself…"

Shortly afterwards, the pace of the changes accelerated again. Wikus, who'd been resting comfortably, tensed and clutched at Christopher's forearm.

"Here we go," he whispered. "It comes in waves. Like having a fooking kid."

Christopher, who'd experienced the contractions associated with his own race's version of childbirth firsthand, looked down at Wikus with curiosity and mild alarm.

"You mean that figuratively, I hope."

"Oh sure. Just…it hurts…"

A doctor soon came and put him under again. It would have been cruel to leave him otherwise.

The next time Wikus regained consciousness, he looked human enough that his wife, Tania, was allowed to start visiting. Christopher was grateful to the woman whom he'd yet to meet and who'd never lost hope and faith in her husband. She freed him from the duty of supporting and comforting Wikus through the remainder of his transformation so Christopher could better concentrate on helping with the rescue and on preparing for the upcoming trial.

The trial had actually been Christopher's idea. His leaders had been livid enough at first to contemplate wiping the Earth clean of life just as soon as the last stranded prawn had been removed. Christopher had argued that this would be unfair, that there had in fact always been many humans who'd wished to help, but that they'd been prevented from doing so by others who were far more malevolent and greed-driven and who—most unfortunate of all—happened to be in charge. Humans also had no experience with other-worldly life forms. They couldn't even come to terms yet with factions out of the ordinary amongst their own species. Some of them still fought each other over territory or resources or breeding rights, like animals. Despite that, there were glimmers of racial cohesion to be found. Humanity as a whole did have some global sense of justice and a surprising hunger to see wrongdoers punished, and punished hard. Gradually, the leaders had come to see the value in Christopher's suggestion to let the humans discipline their own. Besides, doing so would keep the wretched little apes busy and out of the way while the rescuers saw to the immediate task of evaluating and evacuating all their refugee brothers. They could always go back and incinerate the Earth after all, if they didn't like what was uncovered.

Conveying their demands had taken a while. Just the sight of the enormous spaceships coming down had been enough to send every human within kilometres of District 10 running off in a panic, and the refugees in any case took top priority. The prawn leadership ignored the first tentative attempts to communicate with them, and when the media started trickling back and pressing in too close, like a ring of annoying vultures about a lion kill, they set up a shimmer field to block all sight of what they were doing and gave the security branch the go-ahead to use their weapons and have some fun. A few strategically placed blasts aimed at the news vans and circling helicopters soon established the District's new boundaries. The media still hovered, but further away, ignored once more. The longer the silence between the two races grew, the greater became the humans' foreboding and near-hysteria. Theories and speculation about what the prawns planned to do abounded and got so sinister and ridiculous that the leaders began watching the more frenzied news programmes being aired on television just for the entertainment value.

A few of the more clear-headed individuals left on the human side finally gathered their courage and initiative and tried something utterly unaggressive and very old, yet brazen enough to hopefully capture the aliens' attention in a positive way. Four people, one of them holding aloft a white flag, walked across the no man's land and stopped by the shimmer fence snaking its scintillating way across the road that led to District 10's main entrance. They did nothing else once there, just stood and waited to be noticed, and noticed they were. The leaders had been watching their own surveillance footage of their approach from the very beginning.

"Look at those fools," scoffed one who knew all about the significance of white flags from having recently watched a certain old 50s movie in an effort to better understand the history of mankind's attitudes towards aliens. "It would serve them right if we vaporized them, like the Martians did in that human film."

"I'd prefer something slower," said another.

"Dismemberment is good," suggested a third. "Especially if you remove the head and send it back. It apparently constitutes a message."

In the end and despite all their cheery apocalyptic chat, the three leaders who best understood English donned their most forbidding ceremonial robes, grabbed Christopher, and they all marched out to meet the humans face to face and four on four. The only precaution they took was to bring along a mobile portable shield generator. They'd watched The Day The Earth Stood Still too…both versions.

"What d'you want, human?" demanded the leader who'd been amused by the white flag and who was enjoying his first-contact experience just a wee bit too much.

The man holding the flag and acting as a spokesperson for the group winced, already intimidated by his tone.

"We would like to know your intentions, sir," he said very carefully. "What it is you wish of us. What we can do for you."

"You've already done enough," a different leader snapped. He indicated Christopher. "Do you know who this is?"

The spokesman miserably realized that he didn't. "Ah, no."

"Why, this is number CT43107, the MNU _piece of property_ to whom you assigned the human name 'Christopher Johnson'. He's been telling us all about you."

"That's right," the first leader added, warming to the moment. "And based on what he's said and on what we're hearing from the others, we've been debating whether we should demand restitution or just level your world altogether."

"W-world?" the spokesman yelped. "Level our world?"

Two of the other humans turned visibly paler. The fourth whirled around, heaved, and noisily redecorated his footwear. The leaders burst into the prawn version of uproarious laughter, clacking their jaws together while swinging their heads and swimmeret arms up and down. Christopher pretended to study the underside of the colony ship directly above him. Although it was not his place to question anything any leader did and he was too polite to have voiced his opinion anyway, Christopher's thought was that his own people were not exactly presenting themselves at their diplomatic best at that moment.

"Christopher here has also told us that you humans already have a judicial system in place to punish those who commit crimes of a species-wide nature," the first leader went on, turning serious again. "As of now, you will begin honouring our refugee citizens' rights, which even you deemed should to be equal to your own, and bring to justice those who've preyed upon them since their arrival. You'll do it in the city where our people first sought help and you'll broadcast it live to the populace of your entire planet. No withholding and no delays—we want it done fast. And a safe place elsewhere in the city, where we can meet and monitor what you're doing, we'll need that too. Christopher will represent us and convey any further demands. From now on, you will speak to us only through him."

Oh joy, thought Christopher, rolling his eyes.

"Do all that to our satisfaction and we'll consider leaving peacefully. But disappoint or annoy us in any way and…boom! Fireworks!"

"The _last_ fireworks," the second leader clarified.

"Of the sort that fall on crowds and _burn them up_," added the third, and with that said, all three leaders spun about and strode regally back the way they'd come, leaving Christopher behind to deal with the humans alone. These worthies stared at the newly appointed ambassador with beseeching, wide-open eyes, still half in shock, desperate to appease him and, through him, the might of the prawn armada. It was a look which Christopher would become very used to over the coming weeks.

The threat of global annihilation proved to be just the ticket to kick humanity's collective butt and get things moving. The first step was getting Johannesburg back up and running. The city and its outlying municipalities had been virtually abandoned within hours of the new prawns' arrival, leaving behind only the crazies, the destitute, and a handful of genuine sorts who'd resigned themselves to their fate and who'd intended to observe and record all they could until the end. Now that the aliens' intentions were finally known, people started coming back, first in a trickle, then in torrents. Members of the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice joined forces and set up shop in a convention center north of the city proper and began hastily rewriting their laws to include crimes against aliens of human-equivalency. Personnel at the Lenz military base were tasked to create and staff an ultra-secure compound nearby, just as requested, and a slew of potential liaisons and representatives for all mankind began lining up to present themselves for the prawns' perusal. Once again, the eyes of the world fixed upon Johannesburg, with fearful darts towards the mighty space fleet hovering above District 10. What was happening within the District itself still remained hidden from human scrutiny. Most people interpreted this as a bad sign and became more paranoid than ever.

The revelation that the prawn individual now serving as the aliens' ambassador was the same one who'd escaped from District 9 three years ago with the mothership created yet another giant uproar. Overnight, Christopher Johnson became a media sensation. Prawn sympathizers all over the globe cheered upon learning his story and rallied behind him. To others, he became the face of the prawn menace, both past and present, and was feared and hated in equal measures. Christopher was far too busy to take note of his growing superstar status on his own. He only became aware of it from his new colony colleagues and friends who were having a blast following all the media coverage and who teased him about it unmercifully.

MNU and its subsidiary and subcontracted companies had done a piss-poor job of mopping up after news of their initial alleged atrocities against the District 9 prawns first broke and it wasn't long before the newly renamed World Court issued its first list of criminals wanted for a variety of equally newly defined crimes against aliens of human-equivalency. Some of the culprits were still, almost unbelievably, going about their work just as they had been three years ago, still stubbornly convinced that they were doing nothing wrong. Others had bolted as soon as the armada first showed up and tried to go into hiding, but the possibility of racial termination had a way of trumping bribes and favours and the bolters without exception soon found themselves in custody, being marched back to Johannesburg to face the intergalactic music. The only wanted fugitives who managed to escape their fate were the ones who committed suicide rather than face justice. The general mood of the world by then was such that all of these deaths were considered well-deserved.

One of the wanted men who'd been taken while still on the job was Wikus's own father-in-law, Piet Smit, the managing director of MNU's South African branch, and what Wikus and Tania thought of that was something they weren't about to make public yet; although both van de Merwes were back on Earth and in protective custody by then, Wikus's very existence was being kept secret for the time being. Christopher, who knew some of the background story, wondered how Wikus would hold up when he had to testify against his relative in court. He'd told Christopher of how he'd feebly begged Piet for help and had been shrugged aside, even though the older man had known that Wikus was about to be eviscerated alive.

Christopher found out soon enough. Wikus van de Merwe's appearance in court, when he was first called as a witness, amounted to an even bigger bombshell than Christopher himself. And while Piet Smit didn't shit himself, the colour of his face and that of some of the other accused sitting in the dock with him did for a while bear an uncanny resemblance to curdled milk. Wikus, in all honesty, didn't look much better. He was still gaunt, with yellowish smudges visible about his eyes and along the lines of his lower jaw, the last healing remnants of his extensive bruising, and his hair looked as if it'd been brutally shorn for a stint in a third-world prison. Yet his eyes were clear and his gaze steady, and he held himself well and spoke with no trace of the nervous stammer evident in footage of the man from the day he'd begun the historical evictions of District 9. Something remarkable had happened to him, that was obvious. And where had he been during the intervening years? Had he really been getting off banging the prawns? All over the planet, viewers clung to their screens, fascinated by the mysterious turns the interspecies saga was taking. Feeding one's puerile curiosity helped keep the anxieties over being obliterated at bay.

For the first time, the true reason for Wikus's so-called infection and why he'd fled from MNU and gone on the run came out. Where had he gone? Nowhere, really. He'd simply lost himself amidst the throngs of other homeless, overlooked individuals roaming the city's underside…it hadn't been that hard, sad to say. When Christopher and his fellows returned, Wikus had sought them out and asked for help, and the prawns had purged his body of the alien mutagen which had ravaged him and that was that. Of course, such a bald, abbreviated explanation was nowhere near enough to assuage the public's curiosity, but he refused to elaborate any further nor could he be forced into revealing more—the man's personal troubles had no real pertinence, after all. What the prosecutors wanted to hear were all the gory details of what had transpired in the MNU labs, and on that subject, Wikus had plenty to say, seasoned with much simmering virulent rage. His recounting of how he'd been forced to kill a prawn marked with a cartoonish 'X' as part of a weapons test was especially damning and had Piet Smit drawing his lips back from his teeth like a snarling cornered wolf. Christopher was glad to see Wikus handling the difficult testimony with such aplomb. It was the prawn still in him, he'd thought, lending the human man extra strength and resilience when he needed it most.

There was more. Wikus had also seen what happened to the prawns who'd refused to let themselves be evicted from District 9, the wild, aggressive ones who'd gone feral and who no longer bowed to human authority. These holdouts, MNU had dug out mainly at night, secretly sending in sharpshooters equipped with silencers and infrared and starlight technology to find their targets. The humans had shot to kill, with no warnings given. On two occasions, Wikus had witnessed wounded prawns trying to surrender and being shot in the head and killed anyway. A hyena wandering into the city would have been treated with more compassion and understanding. An attempt would have been made to tranquilize such an animal or otherwise capture it alive, but with the renegade prawns, MNU hadn't even tried.

Tania van de Merwe always sat in the courtroom while her husband testified and would always leave when he did, presumably to meet up with him again and keep him company. Christopher sometimes watched her on his monitors at the military compound with interest. She appeared, in her own way, as resilient and steely as Wikus himself. That her own parent was one of the most vilified culprits on trial didn't even seem to trouble her, but then the bonds between human mates normally overrode those between parent and child, or were supposed to…Christopher wasn't exactly sure about this part of it, as human social behaviour in general still confused him. All he did know for certain was that Wikus had missed her terribly and that much of his motivation to help Christopher during those crazy few days before Christopher had escaped could be traced back to his desperate determination to return to her.

Wikus was on the stand for four days and his testimony was so devastating that the defence wouldn't even touch him. Christopher caught some news footage of him leaving the convention centre shortly after being released, his face very wan as he clung to Tania, almost being supported by her, as the two walked to a waiting car and got in. It was the only sign Christopher ever saw of how much the ordeal truly cost his human friend.

Another former MNU employee named Fundiswa Mhlanga was up next. Christopher vaguely remembered the man as having been present the day Wikus had first tried to serve Christopher his eviction notion, a nervous sort who'd tried to stay behind the others and who'd looked very upset throughout. He was surprised to hear that Fundiswa was the man who'd first tried to expose MNU's experimental outrages. Christopher had gotten the sense at the time that Fundiswa was just the old Wikus all over again, just another low-level bureaucrat being groomed in practical methods of how to keep prawns in line and compliant.

And if learning of the man's heroics was surprising to Christopher, then finding out that Fundiswa had been subsequently arrested for his efforts, that he was in fact still serving out a prison term, bewildered him. The prawn ambassador had to turn to one of the humans assigned to him for help, a correspondent named Grey Bradnam whom Christopher had selected personally after seeing him in a documentary and liking his frank manner.

"I don't understand," Christopher had said to Grey via one of the translating machines the prawns on Christopher's ship had built. "This man provided evidence of illegal activity and yet he is the one being punished."

"Yes, that's true," Grey replied. He paused, trying to think of the best way to explain the concept of whistle-blowing to an alien whose own loyalty was species-wide. "Fundiswa signed a contract of non-disclosure when he first joined MNU. It's a common practice for many of our companies and corporations. Signing the contract forbids employees from disclosing information about the company they work for to a third party, especially information that could have negative consequences for the company."

"But they committed crimes. Atrocities!"

"I know. And I agree that under such circumstances non-disclosure agreements shouldn't apply. But they do, and Fundiswa broke his."

"So you value confidentiality and artificially-enforced loyalty above the rights of my people."

"I don't. I believe that it's wrong, terribly wrong," said Grey, "but from a legal standpoint…" He trailed off and shrugged, his sad eyes pleading. "We are trying. Some of us are trying. In some countries, people like Fundiswa would be protected. The contract wouldn't apply if the information disclosed revealed criminal activity on the part of the company. But here…"

He shrugged again. Christopher regarded him severely, refusing to be mollified.

"You know it is wrong and your leaders know it is wrong, and yet you do it anyway," the alien reflected aloud, half in anger and half in dull wonder. "Why, why, _why_ do you people behave this way?"

"Ego. Greed. Fear, maybe. It's humanity's eternal struggle. Our tragedy and our shame."

"And perhaps your doom."

Grey swallowed hard. "If that is your decision, then yes, our doom."

Christopher asked nothing more. He understood all too well already.

Grey Bradnam was perhaps the most honest and upfront human aiding Christopher, and Christopher came to value him highly because of it. Given different circumstances, he was the sort of person Christopher could have also befriended, another human besides Wikus he might have grown to like. But it was too late to be establishing friendships now—it was too late for all the prawns—and they continued to hold themselves aloof and all their doings remained inscrutable. They wouldn't even reveal their true names or where they were from. When Christopher was asked what his people preferred to be called, he advised the humans to simply carry on as they had, leaving them with the innocuous terms 'alien' and 'space person' and one other which might have been derogatory or maybe not; when they got right down to it, none of the humans who'd made the request could think of a single actual case of an alien ever objecting to being called a 'prawn'. It was just human assumption that they'd mind, and no one had the guts to go back and ask for a clarification.

Dealing with Christopher Johnson was becoming awkward for all the members of his human team. It was his personality. Aloof or not, he was just too darn nice. And the more affable and polite he was, the guiltier they felt for knowing that such an obviously intelligent and perceptive creature had been persecuted and forced to live in squalor for decades. He was the only alien they were allowed to deal with, too. The few times any others showed up, they kept their distance and would speak only with their ambassador, dashing the team's hopes that the compound might serve as a sort of healing embassy through which humans and aliens could finally establish equal and friendly relationships. It was as maddening a development as it was baffling. They were right there, in their fabulous ships, the leaders and creators and builders this time, the smart ones, and still they wouldn't talk aside from issuing threats and demands. The aliens' refusal to explain themselves became another of mankind's great disappointments. The vague sense many humans had, that it was exactly how they deserved to be treated, only made it worse.

Christopher could have explained a great deal, of course, and he could also have eased some of the humans' guilt. He could have told them of how his leaders, despite all their professed anger, had been generally pleased with what they'd found in District 10. By cramming the refugee prawns together into more crowded quarters, their human caretakers slash jailers had finally unwittingly done something very right. The cramped living conditions had concentrated the colonial pheromones exuded by all prawns and greatly accelerated the changes occurring in those with latent traits encoded into their DNA. Within the last two years alone, almost a thousand more prawns had evolved into high-castes. Even more wondrously, the very first leader nymph had just hatched, with several more on the way. The fractured, stranded colony was repairing itself. It would have been whole and healthy again within a generation. A few years more and the humans would have had a terrible war on their hands, for prawn leaders could not tolerate mistreatment the way the lower castes could. For this reason alone, the rescue had come in the nick of time, although whether more for the humans or for the sake of the prawns was hard to say.

The best of the refugees had already been rehomed in the spanking new, empty vessel the rescuers had brought along for just this hoped-for happy outcome. A few years of guidance from volunteers would be all the incipient colony needed to complete its regeneration and become self-sufficient. The excess workers—and there were almost two million of them—were still being evaluated and divided up amongst the crews on the other ships. Many of them were in a bad way, psychologically ruined and thin and unhealthy. But even the most damaged ones were expected to recover once bathed in the regulating pheromonal soup of a normally functioning, happy colony and well fed and given back some purpose in life. Worker prawns were incredibly resilient creatures, capable of withstanding almost anything fate threw at them. That they'd been able to survive and even thrive on such a backwards, half-assed world as planet Earth was a perfect testament to their legendary toughness.

Christopher's own colony adopted sixty thousand of the excess workers. Seeing the faces of the new prawns, some scarred and pinched with long-standing rage or despair, brighten with fresh hope once aboard brought the reality of what Christopher had accomplished into focus like nothing else and filled him with joy. He needed the boost. The trial had slogged on in the meantime and Christopher was up next as the last witness for the prosecution.

Christopher had a few bad minutes when he first took the stand and flashed back to memories of an interrogation he'd undergone at the hands of MNU operatives many years ago. It had happened when he was still changing and had just intelligence enough to appreciate the gravity of his situation and be scared half to death. Luckily, he'd managed to pull off playing dumb well enough to fool his interrogators, but it had been a near thing and left him fearful of all humans for a very long time afterwards. The man questioning Christopher this time had to gently coax him along until the traumatic memories faded, then the floodgates opened and his prawn witness became able to speak freely.

And what a lot he had to say, first corroborating Wikus's account of what they'd seen together in the MNU labs and then recounting all the previous abuse he'd had to endure, years and years worth of abuse at the hands of humans in general and MNU agents in particular. His deep rumbling alien words, accented with ticks and clonks and swishy rattles, were translated into dozens of languages and broadcast round the world and attracted the largest audience ever to watch or listen to any witness at any trial. It became a hallmark testimony, the representative deposition of an entire species, and a bewilderment for many who'd assumed for decades that all the aliens who'd been living on Earth were as dumb as stumps. The accused in the dock glared daggers at Christopher throughout, knowing now that they'd been duped by at least one prawn and probably many more, but all their impotent anger did was encourage him. As it was with Wikus, Christopher's evidence was too devastating to touch. He would be released at the end of his passionate purge with not a single query or rebuttal.

While Christopher was still on the stand delivering the testimonial which would make him famous, the rescue party removed the very last prawn from District 10 and completed its mission. When the world awoke the next morning, the alien shimmer field was gone, and the so-called sanctuary park was once again visible, looking much the same as it had the last time the humans had seen it. But not for long. What happened next shocked everyone.

Two large auxiliary vessels detached from a nearby mothership and flew down together to hover a hundred or so meters above the surface of District10. They began spooling out a thick cable between them, metallic and segmented, with a curious double array of flaps hanging all along its bottom. With the cable stretched tight between them, the two vessels then turned in tandem and positioned themselves by one of the perimeter fences. Then they activated the cable, and a curtain of unearthly white fire rained down.

There was no sound, no explosions, possibly not even any heat emitted at all. But whatever the fire touched, it instantly turned into a grey powder, which fell to earth and lay in drifts. All day long the two ships moved up and down over the former camp, dragging their harrow of death between them, and by evening, nothing remained of District 10 but a huge field of pale ashes. Even the soil was cleansed. Weeks into the future, when scientists finally investigated, they would find that the white fire had burned several meters deep, reducing even the microbes into nothing but a powdery elemental residue.

The show of power spooked everybody. Several human supremacy groups and countries with more ordnance on hand than brains, who hadn't taken kindly to Christopher's testimony and who were starting to entertain ideas about fighting back, suddenly found their will and their plans dissolving. It was just as well. Christopher had no sooner finished up in court than he found himself addressing the humans again, this time in his role as the aliens' representative ambassador. Now that the prawns had removed all trace of their former presence in District 10, what they wanted next was the return of all alien artefacts left on planet Earth, whether tech or biological, even if it was just a few cells preserved on a microscope slide. Any artefacts that weren't handed over freely, would be hunted down and taken. By force, if necessary.

As demands went, it was the first one which generated some real defiance. Few people really minded that the prawns were leaving. But to give up their valuable weapons and devices, and private souvenirs which had been obtained at terrific expense and often illegally, that was a different matter altogether! Much was brought out for pickup over the following week, and just as much was kept hidden. The deadline the prawns had set came and went.

The first forced retrieval made was of a cache of illegally obtained alien rifles that a rich American was keeping in a private vault at a ranch in Texas. A smallish gunship of sorts, just another of the multitude of auxiliary vessels all the motherships seemed to carry, flew an unerring course straight to the ranch and started firing and blew the absolute crap out of the main ranch house. The rich American and a screaming blonde floozie he'd been entertaining escaped in only their underwear just before the roof collapsed. The gunship then landed, disgorged two prawns wearing exosuits who rummaged through the rubble and dragged out the vault and cut it open, and that was the end of those particular rifles' brief stay in the Lone Star State. An alert local TV news crew caught almost the entire event on video. The prawns didn't mind one bit being filmed. One of them even made his exosuit wave at the camera.

By the next morning, thousands more weapons and other items had been handed in to local police stations who were acting as drop-off centers. However, it took several more 'retrievals', most notably a spectacular firefight which erupted over a Central American warehouse and which ended with a liberal application of the white fire weapon, before all humans everywhere accepted that the prawns could track and find their stolen tech and biomatter regardless of where it was and complied fully.

Other alarming things began to happen. Although many of the colony ships dispersed to various strategic parts of the globe to take part in the retrieval sweep, the lead ship—Christopher's vessel—simply shifted position from District 10 to an ominously low new station directly over the convention center where the trial was taking place. A number of other motherships retreated into space and were subsequently tracked by observatory telescopes to some of the other planets in the solar system where they then did who-knew-what, raising the disturbing possibility that they might be casing the system for eventual invasion. It made the humans at the prawns' monitoring compound antsy enough to risk asking Christopher point-blank about the purpose of all the recent interplanetary activities. The prawn ambassador had looked down at them out of his great brown eyes and replied that they were 'exploring'.

As explanations went, it did absolutely nothing to calm anyone's fears. The brief clashes over the return of the weapons and the almost effortless ease with which the prawns had quelled them had scared everyone, and the giant mothership once again hovering over Johannesburg cast its oppressive pall over more than just the city. A general anxiety gripped humanity. It spread to the handling of the trial, which had taken front and center in the news again, and made everyone want to hurry through its remainder and get to the verdicts. If mankind was destined to die beneath a rain of cool white death, better to know sooner than to put it off, most felt. Thus it was that the defence of those accused of the world's first crimes against aliens of human-equivalency went down in the books as being among the shortest on record. Even if the prawns weren't always present, it was believed that they were always watching, and nobody really wanted to be seen as defending or in any way sympathizing with the MNU gang anyway.

The World Court announced that the verdicts were in and would be read out the following morning at nine o'clock local time. The convention center was already packed by dawn, the courtroom filled to capacity, thousands more visitors waiting outside to watch the broadcasts on the big screens. Even the prawns paid attention, with every ship in space and elsewhere returning to fill the skies high over Johannesburg, the entire great armada gathered together at last with its lead ship slung low beneath them all, poised to observe or perhaps to strike. Their ambassador also chose to observe from afar; tensions were running too high for him to have felt safe in the courtroom and he'd been feeling a curious malaise when around humans ever since testifying, as though the memories he'd dredged up had finally soured him for keeps towards the entire species. Only Wikus, with whom he'd shared a life and death adventure which went beyond race and history, still appealed to him, yet Wikus wasn't present in the courtroom either. He'd been put off attending in person by the same tensions and crushing potential publicity that had discouraged Christopher.

All of the accused were found guilty of every last charge, which caused a wave of cheers and relief that rippled across the entire planet. The prawns didn't react at all. Their ships remained still, nothing but silvery stately sentinels dotting the heavens, their inaction and silence for once seeming a good thing. By noon, Christopher issued a short statement to the effect that his people were pleased with the outcome so far, just to keep the media hounds at bay, then began to make plans to return to his mothership to get away from being further pestered. It was only the hand-delivery of a certain special message at that point which made him delay his getaway and remain in the compound after all. The same message which had included the address of someone who'd been in protective custody for the duration of the trial. Wikus's address, attached to an invitation to attend a private little celebration with the van de Merwes that very evening after supper.

Ambivalent feelings or not, this was one invitation which Christopher couldn't refuse. He sent back a notice of acceptance and made arrangements for his transport. And now here he was, being driven through the dark, en route to see the human man whose fate had intersected with his own in such a profound and life-altering way.

The little convoy eventually made its way onto a quiet, secluded street servicing a number of expensive gated residences. The limo pulled up before the front entrance of one of the smaller properties, one fully enclosed by tall, thick brick walls and wrought ironwork fencing, and the driver spoke to someone via an intercom, then the gate opened. Christopher peered out curiously as they drove in. Much of the property was landscaped with mature trees and bushes, an additional layer of privacy for the modest stone house nestled in their midst. The limo halted. They'd arrived, at the van de Merwes', and Christopher got out for his date with destiny.

…continued in Part II


	2. Part II

A LITTLE SUGAR FOR CHRISTOPHER – PART II

Wikus was already outside when the limo pulled into the long driveway at the side of the house, standing beside his front steps. He hadn't come out just to greet his guest, however. As Christopher walked up, he quickly stooped to tuck a shallow pan in beneath a bush, then straightened again, turning and putting his arms out, already smiling. A familiar scent, long forgotten, drifted up and tickled the prawn's antennae. Cat food!

"Christopher! So here you are. Everything okay? No trouble finding the place, I guess."

The man's arms, human again, wound about him. Christopher hugged back, but carefully, mindful of Wikus's newly restored soft exterior.

"I am pleased to see you, Wikus. You look well."

"I feel well! Now that the damn trial's over, I'm even getting some hair back—like it?"

Grinning, he tousled the new growth on his head with one hand. There was enough there that Christopher could see that he was already combing it over to one side. And he had a sculpted bit of hair back in place again over his upper lip…actually, now that Christopher could step back and examine him more critically, he looked an awful lot like the way he had when Christopher had first seen him, short-sleeved shirt and sweater vest and all. Minus the injured arm and protective gear and nasty attitude, of course.

Wikus led him up the steps and inside, chattering all the way, much more cheerful than when Christopher had last seen him leaving the convention centre in the news footage. As soon as they got away from the door and into a hallway, he started yelling for his wife.

"Tania! Where are you, baby? Chris is here! Come out and meet him."

When the woman finally did appear, Christopher politely arched his antennae forward and put out a hand. To his pleasure, she not only marched right up to him and looked him in the eye, but took hold of his hand with both of her own and gave his a little squeeze.

"I'm so glad to finally meet you, Mister Johnson," she said. "And thank you so much for helping Wikus. I prayed you would be able to do something for him and you did."

Christopher glanced at Wikus. "Please tell her that she's welcome," he began, then stopped when Tania gave his hand another squeeze and a slight tug, demanding his attention.

"It's all right. I understand your language."

"Really," Christopher said, clicking his surprise. In his experience, not many people apart from those who'd worked District 9 learned prawn, but then her husband had been an MNU operative. Maybe she'd expressed an interest and Wikus had taught her. Whatever the reason, it certainly made things easier, and he followed up his clicks with a slight bow of respect. "Then to you I say, you are very welcome. And it was my pleasure to help your mate."

They shook hands. Tania smiled broadly as she did so, then giggled a little. It was probably because he'd used the word 'mate', Christopher thought. He'd noticed before that humans seemed to find it funny…just something in the translation.

"You guys are some fooking formal," Wikus interjected. "I hope you aren't going to sit around mooning over each other all night, talking like bloody la-de-das."

"Oh stop," Tania admonished. "He's so bad," she added, looking up at Christopher and—winking? That meant she was joking, right? Because it was a female doing it. If a male winked, it meant something flirtatious. Or did he have it reversed?

Christopher bypassed his confusion by making an inane comment about the house. Humans always seemed to like it when you complimented their living quarters.

"This is a very nice home," he said earnestly, disengaging his hand and sweeping it around in no particular direction. "It is very…homey."

"Fook!" Wikus exploded. "You don't even—baby, he doesn't know about the settlement yet."

"Oh! Well, you have to tell him. Go show him while I get the tea ready." She gazed back up at Christopher, all sunshiny sweetness again. "I think you'll like this," she said, reaching out to brush his hand one final time. "Maybe you'll even know the prawn involved."

"Ha ha! Ja! His old boyfriend. Girlfriend. Fook—whatever."

Christopher, now well and truly perplexed, let himself be hustled away while Tania went off in the opposite direction. Wikus took the prawn to a large room set up like an office. He paused then, looking down, turning serious. In fact, he stood there saying nothing for so long that Christopher was moved to prompt him.

"Er, the settlement?"

Wikus appeared to not even hear him.

"This was my office in the old house too," he said at last. "The set-up, I mean. My in-boxes…system…she kept it all the same. MNU took it, but Tania made them bring it all back…ja, my Tania… She never gave up on me…"

Christopher shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He'd heard the human term 'waxing poetic' a while back and had been amused to learn its meaning, but this sounded like it was about to become a case of waxing on a novel-length scale. He tried to remain patient, though. It WAS Wikus, after all.

"Ja…all my stuff, all the same. For three years she kept it." He reached down to a coloured glass holding several pencils and other items and picked out an odd silvery thing that looked a bit like a crumpled tinfoil version of the umbrellas they stuck in girly drinks in pretentious bars. "Can I confess something to you, Christopher?"

"Of course. Anything."

"Okay. The reason I stayed behind, in District 9…it wasn't just because I was scared of the other prawns and MNU."

"Oh?"

"Ja, it was more about this." He twirled the tinfoil thingy between his fingers. "I started making little presents, leaving them where Tania could find them. It was the only way I knew to let her know I was still out there, thinking of her, without her fooking father and his cronies finding out."

"I see… And she interpreted your tokens correctly, I presume."

"Oh ja…she knew. She guessed before, but then she knew. This was the first one…"

Christopher watched him touch the silvery trinket to his lips, then he seemed to shake off his melancholy as suddenly as shaking off a coating of rainwater. "But hey, enough of me. Okay, our crazy settlement! We were going to sue MNU and they're so fooked already with the trial and all, they offered to buy us off with this house and enough money that we can kick back and sloth it for the rest of our lives. So it's ours now, this house, imagine that, ay? A guy like me, living here?"

"This is compensation for torturing you in the lab?" Christopher asked, trying to clarify the issue for himself.

"Oh fook, no! Like we'd get anything for torture. They'll just throw the bastards in jail for that. No, this is for something a lot worse. Slander and libel, man! Here, wait'll you see…"

Excited now, he stuck the token back in the glass and fired up the computer on his desk. A few second's work brought up a saved video. "Here. Here! Look at this!" Wikus enthused, tilting the screen so Christopher could better see.

Some sort of TV news bulletin started playing, a man talking about someone being 'highly contagious'. Then a bad photo of Wikus's face appeared along with a cutline about contracting an 'alien sexual disease'. Christopher was still trying to wrap his head around the very idea when the bulletin went ahead and did it: they displayed a photo image showing exactly how Wikus had contracted his supposed disease.

"What!" Christopher exclaimed.

Wikus grinned up at him. "Nice, ay?"

"That's horrible! Why would they show such a thing?"

"To scare people and make them not want to help me. I mean, no offense, Chris, but creature sex, that's like the worst…worse than banging a sheep or even maybe kiddy stuff 'cause at least those are still from Earth, y' know?"

Christopher's sensibilities reeled. As sleaze went, it didn't even make any sense to him. Even the most desperate prawn had no interest in men—gossip had it that, compared to prawns, human males weren't exactly…well, _fulfilling_. Wikus dug out an old newspaper from one of his desk drawers. It showed the same image in reverse, splashed gaudily over half a page, tagged with the headline 'MNU Man Caught!'. This time, Christopher looked at the photo more closely.

"That's not even real. It's been manipulated," he said.

"Tell me about it," said Wikus. He pointed at the prawn the photo-shopped version of himself was supposed to be nailing from behind. "So, you know this guy maybe?"

"Certainly not! Well…it's hard to tell. His face is blurred."

"Ja! Protect the fooking prawn's identity, but not me!" Wikus laughed. "You should read the article. All the pornographic stuff I did. Was supposed to do."

"No thank you," said Christopher, rather primly.

"I mean, it's disgusting and freaked me out back then, but now it just seems kind of funny. And not so disgusting anymore, after being one of you for a while. It'd be all right now, I think. Maybe I'd even like it if it was you, hey?"

Ooo-kay, Christopher thought, trying not to give in to the urge to sidle away a step or two. Wikus was still looking at the newspaper picture of himself and the nameless prawn, pondering over it with a weird intensity. Then he seemed to snap out of it and became jocular again.

"Anyway, all this stupid shit got us this house. Dumb bastards. Like they could claim they didn't do it or it was misinterpreted!"

"What did Tania think about all this when it was first publicized?" Christopher asked, curious.

Wikus hopped up from his seat and shut off his computer and began putting the paper away while he answered.

"She fell for it a little, at first, no thanks to her fooking father, who tried to convince her it was true. But after thinking about it, she realized it couldn't be. She came around…ja, she did. Gave me hope…"

Something they'd both needed, at the time, as Christopher recalled. He followed Wikus out of the office, still a touch dazed by all the craziness humans could come up with, even about each other.

"So that's how we won our settlement," Wikus concluded as they walked back through a long hallway. "Out of court and everything. We're still not a hundred percent whether we'll stay here, though. We could always sell it, get even more money, move somewhere where people don't know us and I won't get chased to be on some fooking TV freak show, 'My Shocking Story', some shit like that. Sure, the privacy's nice, but it's still an awful big house just for Tania and me, just two people."

"And a cat," Christopher remarked.

"What cat?"

"Don't you have a cat?"

"No. Why would you think that? I hate the fookers."

"But you put out food—"

"Oh. Oh! Oh shit, no. That's for the prawns."

"What prawns?" said Christopher, now totally confused. They couldn't have left anyone behind…could they? Wikus, laughing, set him straight.

"Parktown prawns, man! The gardens are full of 'em. Those big ugly cricket things. I used to squash the bloody bastards whenever I saw one, but now…ah, it doesn't seem right anymore. So I feed 'em instead. Keeps them outside. They love that damn dry cat chow. Ha, guess they really are like your little cousins or something, ay? Ha. Ha ha!"

What are you saying? thought Christopher, now feeling dazed, confused, and more than a little insulted—the perfect trifecta end result of spending way too much time in the company of humans. Luckily, they reached the living room at that point and Christopher got sidetracked by the sight of Tania presiding over a nicely appointed tableful of refreshments before he had time to start feeling really offended. Parktown prawns? Damn! The prawn in Wikus—the REAL prawn, not some insect thing—must be wearing off fast if he was back to finding slurs like that hilarious!

Tania's kind, approving glances, as she poured them all a round of tea, helped make up for Wikus's lapses. Or maybe not. Christopher could only make a show of lifting the delicate little teacup he was given up to his mouth. How he was supposed to actually use the thing to drink from—sheesh! Didn't the two of them think things through at all?

"I showed him that photo," said Wikus.

"And?" asked Tania.

"No luck! Guess my fooked-up, sexually-diseased, contagious alter ego was banging Mister Anonymous."

Tania laughed. "Too bad. If Christopher—may I call you Christopher?—if Christopher had known who that prawn was, he could have informed him and then MNU could have had another lawsuit on its hands."

"Fook, ja! From a prawn! Imagine their faces!"

Then they were both laughing, picturing MNU officials they knew being sued by a prawn. Christopher, left out, moodily dipped a tentacle into his teacup, contemplating whether he should try licking out the fluid bit by bit with his grooming tongue.

Before he knew it, one of the humans was hopping up again, this time the woman. "Time for something special for my two favourite boys," she announced, with a knowing little twinkle in her eye.

"Oh ja! Bring it on, baby!" Wikus urged. He grinned over at Christopher, would no doubt have dug him in the side of his chest with his elbow if he'd been closer, and made a lewd sound to chase after his wife as she left the room. Christopher, more than a tad alarmed by the sudden goings-on, sat up very straight and proper.

"What's happening?"

"It's a surprise. You'll love it. My Tania, she worked all afternoon on it. She made it for us, ja?" A loud scrape, then the clash of colliding silverware issued from the kitchen. "Ah fook! Wait, baby!" Wikus hollered, and jumped up so fast that he shoved the table into Christopher's legs and made the alien start and slop some of his tea out, luckily onto the delicate saucer he was carefully holding beneath its accompanying cup. Oblivious, the human rushed on, into the kitchen. Christopher breathed hard, gill slits fluttering, trying to regroup his nerves. He'd always assumed that the man he'd known before had only behaved in such a nervous and erratic fashion because of his transformation woes, but it seemed as though it was his natural state of being.

Christopher used the momentary lull to pour most of his remaining tea out into the saucer, then drank the saucer dry, with far more ease than he could have done so using the tiny cup. The liquid tasted awful, like boiled weeds. But at least he'd sampled enough of the noxious fluid not to offend his hosts. He set the utensils down and settled back to await the next subtle torture the humans had planned for him.

When it came, it was a doozy. The van de Merwes came back into the living room together, clumsily supporting a large platter between them. There was some sort of round white gleaming thing on it, and when they set it down on the table, Christopher could see a scrawl of dark brown writing covering a hump on the thing's center and more dark lines encircling the hump and a series of smaller greasy-looking lumps all along the thing's edge. And there were a bunch of silvery candles, all lit, stuck in at random. The arthropoid stared at the dancing flames as if mesmerized, completely nonplussed, while his hosts sat back down on the couch together, smiling, enjoying his surprise.

"Isn't it great?" Wikus finally exclaimed.

"Uh. Yes?"

It came out as an anaemic squeak, punctuated with a click. Wikus bent eagerly towards the cake wreck he'd just help deliver.

"Look! It's your mothership, the one you left in without me, ay, you sneaky prawn? There's the bridge and there's those engine things. And all the antennae, those are the candles, ha! Can you read the writing?"

Christopher peered at the message, which looked as though it were sliding off the hump to one side with embarrassment. Although he could read English, the lettering was in cursive and hard for him to decipher; he wound up having to enunciate the words syllable by syllable to be sure of getting it right.

"Con-grad…grad-u-lations?"

"Yay!" Wikus interjected, too excited to notice the error.

"Vic-tor-y for…for prawn-kind… Prawn-kind?"

"Ja! Because we got them! You and I, ah? All those MNU bastards…oh, sorry, Tania."

"That's all right," she said. Despite her words, she stared down at her hands for a long moment, wringing them together in her lap, then she took a deep breath and looked up again, into the solemn face of their alien guest. "I know now what my father and some of the others did to you, Christopher. I'm so very sorry. I wish there were some way of going back and starting over and I hope you can forgive us."

The genuine concern and kindness, the sudden sincere apology, it disarmed him completely. Christopher had always been good-hearted and forgiving by nature—too forgiving, some of his friends used to say to him, even before the changes which had blessed him with greater intelligence and understanding—and he tried hard to get along with others. He'd always been susceptible to earnest pleas and so found himself muttering his thanks and acceptance of this one even though his darker, more pragmatic side knew that there was nothing the humans could do which would ever truly make up for what they'd done to him and his people, nothing at all. But what else could he do, given his immediate situation? He was what he was. A guest in someone else's home. And a big, soft, alien sap.

His words had the immediate effect of dispelling every last scrap of gloom and misgivings the human female might have harboured and she brightened and regarded Christopher with gratitude and surprising warmth and something else he couldn't quite decipher. Wikus did it too, and Christopher, uncomfortable, averted his gaze. It seemed almost as though they wished for his approval on top of his forgiveness, but approval of what? Their part in trying to make good the sins of their entire race, or just the crass confection lying on the table in front of him?

Tania saw where Christopher was staring and was quick to misinterpret his interest, just as he'd hoped. "I considered making the frosting all grey, to better match your ship," she said, returning to the subject of her culinary masterpiece, "but thought the colour would look too depressing." She pointed out a sprinkling of silver sugar beads dotting the frosting between the hump and the outside edge of the cake. "I used dragees instead."

"Oh," Christopher commented politely, after leaning forward to have a closer look. He'd thought that the dots were fly speaks. "That is…very creative."

"Creative, no…that is for my Wikus. He's the creative one," Tania replied, and affectionately squeezed her husband's knee. Wikus tittered. He put an arm around her waist and hugged her tight and they pressed the sides of their heads together. Christopher, watching, felt a jog of empathic happiness deep within. Despite all their foolishness and casual offences, it was clear to him that the two humans were truly devoted to one another and he was glad he'd helped restore their relationship, even if it was of a sort he couldn't fully comprehend.

It went not too badly after that. Wikus broke out a bottle of wine for himself and Tania, and for Christopher, whose people reacted poorly to alcohol, he brought out some sparkling white grape juice. They blew out the candles together, all three of them, and then they tucked in. The cake, for all its hideousness, turned out to be very tasty. Wikus had two helpings and Christopher had three, and both praised Tania for her mad baking skills. She beamed at that and blushed prettily as she shook her head with pretended negation, which only made Wikus gaze at her with newfound adoration. Christopher felt even better. It looked as though the evening were going to end on a pleasant note after all and he was all for that. He'd had enough conflict with humans to last him ten lifetimes and most assuredly did not want any more.

At the very height of all their happy interspecies bonding, Wikus asked Christopher whether he'd like to join Tania and himself in bed.

Christopher was so shocked that he sucked in a tentacle and bit down on it by mistake. Hard.

"What!"

"Fook, man, you've around humans long enough to know," Wikus said cheerfully. 'In bed' means banging, shagging, mating, fo-"

"I know what it means!" Christopher cried, desperate to put a stop to the awful litany. He couldn't believe that the man had just propositioned him! What could he have possibly done to prompt such a thing! Christopher gawped from one van de Merwe to the other and was so rattled by the eager hope he saw in both their expressions that he lost it fully and added, "What makes you think I have the slightest interest in coupling with a human!"

A mistake. Tania's face fell at once. Christopher saw her lips tighten and quiver. He heard a discrete sniffle…another.

"I told you he wouldn't want me," she whimpered.

Wikus swooped in to comfort her, enfolding her with his arms, pressing his head close.

"Oh no, no no, baby, he's just surprised. He doesn't know what he's saying. You're surprised, ja, Christopher? Say that you are! Fooking wine…should have gone slower… Why didn't I go slower… You needed it slower, right, Christopher?" Now Tania was crying in earnest. Christopher could see the water spilling out of her eyes. Wikus began trying to wipe it from her cheeks, starting to blubber a little himself. "Please, baby, don't cry! You know it makes me crazy. He didn't mean it. I know he didn't. Those fooking prawns, they're always fooking people. You thought I fooked one yourself, remember? He just needs a minute to think about it, don't you, Christopher? Just a minute? Please?"

The hell of it was that the alien was thinking…thinking that he felt terrible about what his careless outburst had just wrought. It warred with his righteous indignation—honestly now, what HAD possessed the pair!—and left him weak and confused.

"Why?" he croaked (or clicked, to be more precise).

Wikus licked a tear off his moustache, his hope rekindling.

"We owe you," he said simply. "Tania and I…if it weren't for you, we wouldn't be together, not like this. So…well, we owe you."

Christopher reconsidered. Humans held very bizarre attitudes when it came to matters of coupling, or 'sex, as they called it. They revered it and obsessed about it, yet at the same time often expressed great guilt and shame over their very interest in it. One of Christopher's scientist friends, who'd been studying human mating practices from afar via their various forms of public media, believed that much of their ambivalence could be traced to a subconscious awareness that they'd been short-changed by their own evolution. They sensed that they were only half-beings at best, and that was why some humans tended towards confusion over their own mono-sexed identity and why so very many of them—not all, but many, world-wide—were forever seeking for a special other, a 'true love' or 'soul mate', with whom they expected to form an exclusive relationship in order to feel some semblance of wholeness. And once they did find someone who made them feel complete, they often became insanely jealous and possessive of such partners, jealous enough to murder anyone who interfered. For the two humans before him now to offer what they were offering then…

The big alien turned his face away for a moment, unable to decide. Wikus's attitudes had probably been forever altered by his temporary transformation. He better understood now what it meant to share, to be a friend. The woman, however…

Christopher studied her closely. Her eyes had stopped leaking and she still looked dejected, but he could discern no trace of distaste or fear in her expression, nothing to suggest that the thought of his making advances towards her—the sort of thing which would normally send a human female off in screaming conniptions and make the headlines of every tabloid trash rag and news show in the city—was in any way repugnant to her. Whether because she shared her husband's view or because she felt it would make a statement of ultimate acceptance or for some other strange reason known only to herself, Tania was willing to open her arms to him…her arms and her legs and, er, whatever else went on when humans were involved…how would he know? All he was sure of was that saying no would be interpreted by her as further rejection.

Christopher's large antennae twirled as his palps folded up tight, expressing his mild distress. He really didn't want to make her feel bad again.

"All right," he sighed, without much enthusiasm.

The two humans were so thrilled that they jumped up together at once. Wikus clapped his hands together.

"Yay! Fantastic!" he exclaimed. "You won't regret this, Christopher, I swear! A special taste of human hospitality for you, very special. Tania! You need a bathroom break, baby? No? Fook, I do. Okay, you get him started. I'll be right back."

And another flash of white teeth as the man shot past him. Tania, far more composed even in an excited state, just stood and smiled.

"I'm glad you said yes, Christopher. Would you like to use our facilities beforehand too, after Wikus?"

"No thank you."

He'd seen human bathrooms before and they weren't pretty. They were also way too cramped. How humans managed, he didn't know.

Tania pulled at the end of her long hair with one hand. Her smile developed a funny little irregularity, a quirking up of one corner, as she regarded him. "The bedroom's over here," she said, and led the way.

Christopher tried desperately to recall everything he'd ever heard about human mating practices as he followed one of his wannabe partners into their special sleeping area, the place which for most humans doubled as their private coupling room, if his information was correct. At least it was a male and a female who were about to make demands of him. Dealing with two females would have been harder; he wasn't as lively anymore as he'd been in his younger days. But servicing the woman, Tania, and then letting Wikus have his way with him…well, he could manage that. He'd just grind his jaws together and think of Homeworld, and half an hour from now it would all be over and he'd be cleaned up and out the door and everyone would be happy, right? Right?

Wrong.

He sensed it would be bad the instant he stepped through the door and found himself awash in pastels and knickknacks. Heaps of foamy-looking bedding material lay everywhere. Baskets overflowing with recycling cans put through a shredder (or perhaps they were more of Wikus's presents) shared space with photos of mean-looking people on top of a pink and white dresser. A carpet remnant with its fibres partially ripped out hung on the wall. Christopher had seen some tacky crap which passed as decorative by human standards in his day, but this looked like someone had mugged a rubbish collector or two and proudly carried home the spoils.

Tania ignored the mess. She stood in front of the mirror attached to the pink and white dresser and began to take her clothes off. Christopher watched, fascinated. There were a lot more layers to peel off than he would have thought possible. The little bit that he wore, a vest and a unique garment whose name best translated into the term 'pelvic-wear', seemed paltry by comparison. Wikus rushed in and joined Tania and began taking off his own clothes—no, he tore them off, more like—and now Christopher had two strip shows to watch. Everything the two of them removed went straight to the floor. Throughout it all, they grinned at each other and made odd chortling sounds and bounced from foot to foot as they contorted themselves; stripping was fun! Christopher almost wished that he'd worn more himself, then again, maybe not. Some of the things Tania wore looked a little tricky to manipulate and even Wikus fumbled a bit as he helped her take off the last piece, an abbreviated sort of inner vest slung about her upper chest…or perhaps it was just his high-strung enthusiasm making him clumsy.

The instant both were naked, they hopped onto the bed and turned towards him expectantly, eyes bright with excitement. Christopher noticed for the first time that some of the bed's coverings were already pulled down. They'd been planning this, all along. His bad feeling started to reassert itself.

It was Tania who stopped him from backing out.

"Oh, so shy," she murmured, and sidled over to the edge of the bed and sat up. By stretching, she could just reach him, and her hands went straight to the garment slung over his pelvis. With a start, Christopher realized that the van de Merwes' strip-a-thon had just expanded to include him; she was undressing him, and pretty skilfully too. "Are you shy, Christopher?" she asked playfully, fiddling away.

"No," he replied, barely able to choke the single word out. Really now, what else could he say? I've changed my mind? I want outta here? That might have been more honest, but it wouldn't look very good for the ambassador for all 'prawn-kind' to cut and run at such a crucial moment. Besides, the way she was brazenly handling him, the slender little fingers brushing over an area normally considered personal, was making him feel very weird indeed, way too weird to be making any sort of difficult decision just then. With another heartfelt sigh, he yielded to the inevitable and pulled off his vest while Tania finished removing his pelvic-wear. The floor seemed to be the place of choice for cast-off clothing. He let his vest drop.

"Much better," said Wikus, leering. He patted the sheets he was lying on. "Join us."

Christopher got on the bed as ordered and tried to lie down on his side between them, but the van de Merwes were having none of that. Tania flung her arms about his neck and pulled his face against her soft and oddly squishy chest. He felt more fingers, bigger and rougher-feeling than the woman's, rub over his waist and the flare of his hip—Wikus, no doubt. The humans' instant familiarity shocked him into immobility. Christopher was used to foreplay and rituals. There were certain signals to be sent, a set sequence of touches and responses to go through, and that was just to confirm that both parties were interested. But this, this was just so random. This was throwing away the checklist and just pressing any old button to see if it would 'ping'.

Tania began to stroke his antennae, his very, very sensitive antennae. There was no getting away from it, no ducking of his head or turning away. She held him fast and wrapped her fingers around a feeler at its base and then slid her hand up its entire length, over and over. Occasionally, the back of her fingers or hand would bump his even more exquisitely sensitive antennules, which shot a jolt of pure pleasure through his entire body. Feeler-play was something Christopher understood and liked a lot. The sensations he felt, so familiar and yet uniquely created, both mesmerized and encouraged him. Gradually, his rigid posture slackened and he began to relax under the humans' ministrations. Even the warm hand fondling his nether regions no longer felt quite so intrusive or unwelcome. Christopher hesitantly put his feathery-fringed palps forward to brush Tania's skin, brushed it again, then tried tasting the mounded flesh pushed up against his mouth. Much to his surprise, it was quite pleasant. Not enough so to inspire any 'pinging' yet, but not at all off-putting either.

"Oh ja," breathed Wikus, watching the dark tentacles dab over his wife's perfect white bosom. He sat up straighter and began busying his other hand, although not with Christopher.

Tania liked it too. She uttered her charming little giggle, drew back a little, and started caressing the soft structures about the alien's throat and gill slits, virtually the only part of his body where his flesh lay exposed and unprotected. Christopher lay still, working his mouth and contemplating the new sensations. It certainly felt a lot different, more focused and almost ticklish, than when it was another prawn's hand stroking his throat, and it also felt delightful. He decided then and there that letting the humans have their way with him maybe wasn't going to be so bad after all.

"Fook, Christopher, you're doing good," Wikus broke in, almost as if he'd just read Christopher's mind. He sounded oddly wheezy and breathless, even though he hadn't been doing a thing so far except grope around Christopher's private area (or so the prawn thought). Like Tania, he now drew back and changed his angle of attack, started running his hand over the alien's hard upper thigh. "Good and big…damn, you're a big one. Big fooking prawn, ay? Bigger than me, I bet."

Christopher had no idea what the man was getting at. True, Wikus as a prawn had been considerably smaller than himself—the transformation only changed one's biomass, it couldn't generate more out of nothing, after all—but what did that have to do with anything? Was it just that he was taking up too much room in the bed? Christopher drew up his legs self-consciously, just in case. Wikus smirked and reached for the arthropoid's nearest paw-like foot and started to rub it.

"Big feet, too. Feels good… So nice and hard…"

Whatever, thought Christopher, fighting the impulse to jerk his foot away. He liked Tania better. She didn't babble and was gentle with him.

Unfortunately for Christopher, both humans seemed to come to a consensus then that playtime was over. Tania quit caressing his face and throat, which he'd been enjoying immensely, and started pulling at his arm. Wikus, perched behind him, pushed on what passed as his hinder. For an instant, the prawn didn't know if he was coming or going. He sat up, confused and surprised by their sudden urgency.

"What now?" he exclaimed. "Is something wrong?"

"What is that, a joke? A little prawn humour?"

Wikus again, who'd already gone far beyond invading Christopher's personal space to assuming squatter's rights; he was practically hanging off the prawn's back.

"You're one of those hard-to-get guys, ay? Don't you think he's one of those, Tania? Hard-to-get? He likes the teasing."

"I think he's hot," said Tania, and grabbed Christopher by the neck again. But not to pull his face forward. This time she plastered her whole body against him and Christopher was forced to sit up straight and put his arms around her to keep from being pushed over. His swimmeret arms reached out too, their little hands clutching reflexively at Tania's butt and pinching it, which made her squeal and Wikus laugh. Christopher, mortified at having lost control—the darn things did seem to have a mind of their own sometimes—tried to reel them back in.

"No, don't. Leave them," Tania gasped. "I like it." She ground against him, mashing his face with her ample chest. Christopher had to squeeze his eyes shut. "Oh, you're so hard!"

Of course I'm hard, I have a damn exoskeleton! Christopher knew he was being cranky because they'd rushed through the one part he'd liked so far, but honestly! What was it with humans and their obsession with things being hard? And what was up with this business of him being 'hot'? Everyone knew that prawns had a considerably lower body temperature than did humans. MNU had publicized the fact often in their propaganda, using it as evidence that the aliens had more in common with cold-blooded creatures such as Earthly slugs and insects than with mammals, ie. humans. It was a sleazy tactic which had pissed Christopher off to no end when he'd first understood it and it still pissed him off.

Well, maybe Tania meant it as a compliment then. She certainly seemed to be getting her enjoyment out of his body whatever its perceived temperature, judging by her writhing gyrations within his double-armed embrace. It made him feel like a piece of gymnastics equipment.

"Boy, you're getting like a lap-dance, ay, Christopher?" Wikus panted in his ear. "Go, baby, oh ja! Ahh. Ag!"

And now Wikus was getting into it. Christopher could feel the man's male part jab against his leg. He wondered how Wikus could possibly get any pleasure out of what he was doing. The amount of pressure he was exerting seemed positively pain-inducing. That was the price one paid when one's reproductive system was exposed to the world and covered with skin, Christopher supposed. It had to cut one's sensitivity to a phenomenal degree.

Human women had it better, he thought. The part they used for receiving a partner was quite analogous to his own, although theirs for sure didn't additionally house an intromittent organ tucked neatly away towards the front in its own little compartment. Something extra to add to Wikus's experience later on, assuming he could even feel anything at all after all his bumping and grinding.

The pressure on his face lifted and he opened his eyes again. Tania was squeezing the excess sculpted flesh on her chest with her own hands, then she reached them down between her thighs. "I can't wait," she exclaimed between breaths. "Christopher, please say you're ready! I can't tell if you're ready."

"I'm always ready," he said, puzzled.

"Ha! Fooking prawns!" Wikus crowed. "Fooking space sex maniacs." He leaned out past Christopher to grope his wife's breasts, then leaned further still to plant a sloppy kiss on her face. "She'll fix you, my Tania will. She's a lioness. An angel! A bloody gorgeous angel in heat. Fooking her's like fooking heaven on Earth, I tell you."

"Oh, Wikus, you're so sweet." She left off doing what she'd been doing down below to clasp one of his hands and share another moist kiss and slipped her other arm back around the prawn's neck. "Isn't he sweet, Christopher?" she asked him, after kissing his face too.

Christopher was just about back to grinding his jaws together over the humans' incomprehensible inanity.

"I don't know," he replied. "I haven't tasted him yet."

He blinked, but was not terribly surprised when they responded with peals of giddy laughter. Trying to predict their behaviour and adjust his own accordingly was hopeless. Better to remain docile and let them do as they pleased…which was exactly how it had been between his people and all humans for a very long time, Christopher reflected sadly.

Then Wikus said the magic phrase, something about it being time for the 'main event'. This euphemism Christopher understood. He perked up, feelers springing to full attention, and when Tanis peeled herself away from him and appeared about to assume the position, he surged up onto his knees in relief and anticipation. Finally, something he could do which didn't require analysis or any real thought at all! And Tania—

Tania had flung herself down on her back right in front of him.

Christopher froze. The only way he knew how to couple was from behind. Prawns were built to couple like that. It was the only way possible for things to align and fit. Oh, there were variations to be sure—standing, squatting, going at it while on one's knees or lying on one's side—but the main thrust of the matter (pardon the pun) was that it had to come from behind. Did she want him to lie down on top of her, like a human? But that would squash her flat, wouldn't it?

He stared down at Tania, stymied. Tania stared back, frustrated. And while she didn't exactly cross her arms and start tapping her fingers, Christopher got the distinct impression that she was getting very, very impatient with him and that he'd better do something quick.

He touched one of her spread-apart knees. "Uh, you'd better turn over."

"Oh for goodness' sake, Christopher!" she snapped. "Haven't you ever had sex before?"

Her sharp retort was totally unexpected and Christopher, stung, felt even more bewildered. Wikus just laughed. He clapped his prawn buddy on the shoulder to bolster him up.

"Well, he hasn't, baby. Not with a woman. Give him a break!" he said to Tania. He slid his arm over Christopher's back to give him a manly reassuring hug, then looked at him with sudden suspicion. "You haven't, right? Never snuck off to fook any pros, diddled a few girls—"

"No!" Christopher cried. He didn't even know what 'diddle' meant, but it sounded disgusting. Wikus patted him a second time, all smiles again, trying to calm him down.

"Well, good, man. Might have caught something. We don't need that, ay?"

"Wikus, I don't know if I can do this! I am not like you. I'm not like a human man!"

"I know that. I was a prawn too, remember? And it was some fooking weird to feel my, I mean, not feel my bits dangling in the breeze. But you, you prawns, you like to keep things hidden, huh? You're sneaky guys, hiding your bits and your guns and your spaceships."

"Here," said Tania, sounding much less cross than before. She'd had time to start feeling contrite about her sharp remark to Christopher, who really did seem ignorant, poor thing. "Try it like this, sweetie" she suggested. "It'll work like this."

She lifted her legs and began to clamp them about his slender waist. Christopher didn't dare struggle for fear of overexerting his enormous strength. He'd seen too often how badly humans fared when it came to contests of sheer muscle power. Then Tania gripped his upper thighs and managed to lever herself right up on top of them. Her soft human flesh seemed to mould itself to his hard exterior; she got right up against him. Wikus started coaching from the sidelines, issuing cheerfully lewd instructions.

"Spread your legs apart more, Chris. Let her skooch right in there. You've gotta grab her ass too—no, not like that! From beneath…ja, that's it. Hold her good and tight. You don't want to mess up your alien invasion. Ha ha! Get it? Alien invasion…right into Tania's hangar 18!"

Christopher paused while the two of them yukked it up again, looking down. Well, this sucked. How was he supposed to embrace the woman when he had to use his hands to help keep her in place? One of the best things about taking the active role was the delicious feel of a partner's body pulled tightly against one's own, just the closeness of it and the proffered vulnerability. His swimmerets had unfolded on their own and rapped against his arms as they flailed about, seeking a waist to wrap around and a lovely long segmented belly to fondle; finding neither, they slunk back into their recesses, almost forlornly. Yeah, I hear you, thought Christopher, trying to hide his own disappointment.

Holding his breath, fearing the worst, he let himself slide out. But it only felt…comfortable. Comfortable and warm. Comfortable and warm and really quite nice! Relieved, he committed himself and bent to his task with renewed interest. Tania smiled. She looked happy. Wikus, watching, started to drool. Alrighty then, so far so good…

As usual, it took a minute for Christopher to plump up and adjust to his partner's dimensions, and the tighter things got, the wider grew Tania's smile. The first stimulating contraction pulsed through him. Tania felt it too. She sucked in a sharp breath and squirmed against him, moving on him, and all of a sudden it felt wonderful, frictionless yet resisted, just as it should be. Christopher stretched his head forward, palps flagging erratically, tentacles meshing together in a slow twist, and closed his eyes to better savour the experience. Who'd've thought that coupling with a mono-sexed alien born of a different galaxy than himself was even possible, let alone enjoyable? And Wikus was right—they DID owe him, owed him big time. Happily for all concerned, the naughty little defaulters in bed with him were just as eager to pay up as Christopher now was to collect.

Tania started writhing around again, straining against him, forcing Christopher to hang on hard. Humans were so violent when they copulated! Prawn partners barely moved at all, until the end. Most of their action was internal. He worried for a few seconds that he might be hurting the woman, but a glance at her face argued otherwise, and besides, she was clearly working hard to pull herself even closer to him. The soft yet muscular flesh clutched in his own hands and pressed about his waist and against his area clenched and rippled enticingly as she did so. Muscle play was something prawns never felt in each other unless they were joined together. To feel it externally as well as inside seemed strangely erotic to him, almost illicit. Christopher had to admit to himself that he was getting pretty damn excited despite all the strangeness and the differences between them. Even having Wikus hover by his shoulder, playing the perverted instructor as he moaned muddled words of encouragement and stroked the long hard knobbled length of Christopher's back, felt kinda good. Weird, but good.

Christopher leaned forward as much as he dared and bent his antennae downward. He still couldn't reach Tania. A pity. It would have been even better if only he could've nuzzled her and felt her up with his palps and feelers. A second hand touched his back, sliding upward. Wikus was edging in behind him. Now he could feel the man's whole soft body pressing against his own, the hands reaching higher. Christopher arched his neck, wordlessly begging. If only Wikus would think back to his prawn days and take the hint…

He did! Wikus started brushing Christopher's head and antennae with his cupped palms. His mouth raked teeth over the tough scutes protecting the back of the stout neck, the stiff hairs above his lip tickling. Christopher, delighted by the man's initiative and his surprising expertise, uttered a long, low, rattling sound, his version of a growl of pleasure. Wikus's sensual charms made up for the drawbacks of the unnatural position they'd coaxed him into, made up for it in full. "Yes," he murmured happily, satisfied at last. "More please." It was a request which, in retrospect, would come to haunt him.

Wikus grinned and moved his hands to Christopher's face and twined his fingers in amongst the fringe of tentacles.

"I'll give you more all right, you fooking beast," he muttered through another mouthful of chitin and drool. Christopher, who only heard an unintelligible garble apart from the 'fooking', just kept on luxuriating in being pampered by someone who still remembered exactly how and where a prawn liked to be touched. Well, his upper half luxuriated…the rest of him was still working hard to finish up his carnal close encounter with Tania. His partner was currently lolling back just like the lioness Wikus had compared her to, arching her body, stretching her legs out and then drawing them slowly back in to run the soles and toes of her feet over the flares of Christopher's hips, remaining still enough to enjoy—finally!—the alien subtleties of what he was doing to her. Ah yes, Christopher thought, this is good… This'll do… Already he could feel the burn gathering inside, the culmination of this bizarre little capper to his evening approaching. Wikus, as worked up as he and unable to wait any longer, wound his arms about the prawn's chest and hugged him tight as he began grinding away again. Christopher could feel him against the smooth back of his pelvis, rubbing and rubbing, sliding it down and in between his thighs, poking at his—

No. Oh no. No no no no no. That entrance was already in use. No way was he getting in there. Nuh-uh. Not in a million years. He'd just have to wait until—

Wikus got in.

A jolt of astonishment and disbelief raced through Christopher. He hadn't realized how determined and crazy horny humans could be, how stiff and hard and forceful the males were compared to…wait…stiff…hard…oh gad, NOW he understood the obsession! Now, when it was already far too late!

For one long horrid moment, the (shell) shocked arthropoid just knelt there, frozen and helpless. He couldn't pull out and whirl around to dislodge Wikus. He'd surely hurt both humans and as for himself, he was far too tender down there to be whipping it out at the best of times, it was practically an internal organ, and prawns just didn't expose themselves. Even Christopher had only ever seen himself in an excited state once and that was only because he'd resorted to self-fertilization to make Little CJ, a procedure which had proven far more grim and awkward than it was pleasurable and which had left him with messy hands. Wikus, though…well, Wikus was different. He'd been exhibiting his excited state since hopping on the bed and hadn't minded one bit waving and banging it around or grabbing at himself when there wasn't anything to bang it against. If Christopher turned around with his own part showing, he'd probably just laugh and grab at Christopher's too. He might even yank on it and then try to do that human thing they did with their mouths and—no! Enough! Just the thought of having teeth anywhere near his precious organ made Christopher flinch and reflexively drive forward as far into Tania's warm safe comfy depths as he possibly could.

The hard unexpected thrust made Tania shriek. But it was not a shriek of fear or pain, more the sort one would hear while loitering about the vicinity of upper-grade carnival rides, flavoured with a dash of "OHGOD!DOITAGAIN!" Wikus yelled too, equally excited, and lunged forward as well. Christopher squawked like an outraged katydid. Prawns weren't meant to deal with so much stimulation! Receiving was supposed to be the quiet, comforting side of coupling, when one could relax and take a breather and enjoy being loved on by the active partner. How in the Homeworld was he supposed to relax and enjoy anything at all when he was still busy doing someone else and had an alien's male part crammed in tight behind his own at the same time?

Wikus lunged again. Christopher jerked forward too—he couldn't help it, the sensations assaulting his nervous system were just too intense—and found himself losing his balance and his grip on Tania. He slapped both hands down on either side of her to keep from toppling over. Oh, great! Now he'd slide out and be vulnerable to some dreadful new depravity!

Or would he? He might have lost his grip, but Tania hadn't. She'd dug in her claws—really she had!—and somehow hooked her heels in behind his hip protrusions with a tenacity which would have done a grappling iron proud. It freed her to sling herself ever more tightly against her freaked-out inhuman lover, yet allowed Wikus all the space he needed to keep on pounding merrily away.

Christopher, now well and truly trapped in between them, had a sudden terrible epiphany. The reason the two were able to accommodate his alien form so readily was because they'd done all this before. Wikus had been doing a lot more than just leaving presents on Tania's doorstep. He'd stayed behind in District 9 and shown up in good condition because of _her_. She'd learned the prawn language and much more besides because of _him_. At some point, Wikus must have revealed his prawn self to her or been caught while depositing a gift. And Tania, lovely, loving Tania, hadn't run screaming away but had gathered the pitiful shaking creature in her arms and had accepted him just as he was, had fed and sheltered him, had learned to understand him, had developed a _taste_ for him—oh, what was he thinking! But it did make sense. It made so much horrible sense…

Wikus slammed into him, jolting him forward into Tania who once again shrieked with glee. The slight alteration to Christopher's position made it all the easier for the two humans to use his body simultaneously. The feel of it was so exquisite, so overwhelming, and so ultimately terrifying in its sheer intensity that he couldn't do a thing but huddle there on his hands and knees, letting them…well, letting them have their way with him, just as he'd intended. But he'd never expected it would be like this! No prawn ever in the entire universe could have imagined this!

Poor Christopher started to yowl, uttering thin, abbreviated yelps accented with ticks in time to Wikus's thrusts. He had to say something. Lascivious nightmare though it was, it was also the most exciting coupling—sex—whatever!—he'd ever experienced in his life and he couldn't stop himself from responding. Wikus, still plastered against his back and chewing on his neck, groaned and moaned in accompaniment. Tania began urging them both on, with faint breathy cries of "Yes! Yes! Yes!" Given different circumstances, the three of them could have made for quite the background rhythm section for an impoverished band lacking a drummer.

It couldn't last. The friction being generated alone should have already resulted in spontaneous combustion. Their synapses, both human and prawn alike, had fired so often in so short a time, that they were virtually fried. Christopher felt the embers within him burst into flames which licked at his vitals. His swimmeret arms shot out of their recesses with their little hands scrabbling for purchase, driven by their master's extreme emotional stress. They found Wikus's arms clutched about the hard chest above them, latched onto one of his forearms and hung on for dear life. Wikus, panting, tightened his own hold. Tania clung to Christopher. All three were now caught up in the same momentum, hurtling inexorably towards orgasm, and not a single ever-loving one of them had brakes.

"I'm coming, baby! Comingcomingcoming—fook ooohhh fook! Aaahhhurgurglehhhyyyaaahhh!" shouted Wikus.

"Wikus! Sweetie! Christopher! Sweetie!" screamed Tania, starting to thrash.

"RrrrawwwoooOOOoooOOOoohhh!" howled Christopher, a phrase which, translated into English, meant pretty much the same thing as it did in his native language. The fire rose up, burning, burning. The humans' hot flesh, it was all around him and within him, pulsating and heaving and throbbing and squelching. Christopher's nerve endings couldn't take it any longer. He went into overload mode and blacked out.

When Christopher came to, he was lying across the bed, feet dangling over one side, his head over the other, utterly spent. His body still burned with an indescribable medley of conflicting sensations. He felt so worn and used and abused that even his eversible little grooming tongue was hanging out of his mouth, a slender black-tipped ribbon of pink amidst the slack tentacles. The humans had fucked him again. Literally! And the only thing he could do about it now was decide how to best extricate himself from the situation without losing any more shreds of his pathetic shattered dignity.

The van de Merwes stopping him was the least of his concerns. Like him, they were sprawled across the bedding, recovering, two boneless sweaty heaps of pink skin and tousled hair. Unlike him, they thought they'd died and gone to heaven and both had big stupid grins on their flushed faces. They lay in a blissful oblivious stupor all the while he carefully slid off the bed and pawed through the debris on the floor, and were still lost in their hazy euphoria when he finally slipped out the door, decently clad once more.

His driver and liaison did act kind of funny when he first showed up outside, by glancing away and seeming unable to meet his gaze, but accepted his order to return him to his Earth quarters and got to it as per usual. It wasn't until Christopher had gotten seated that he happened to look the right way and realized why the two were behaving oddly; the window of the bedroom he'd just exited was wide open before its drawn shades and it faced the driveway where his chauffeur had parked. They'd heard everything. Christopher sank way down into the upholstery of his seat as the limo pulled out and started off on its drive home, his humiliation complete. His only consoling thought was that he'd probably be viewed as some sort of unearthly stud for his ability to handle two other people at the same time.

He slept poorly that night and spent much of the next day up in his colony ship briefing his leaders and running errands for them. His colleagues, he avoided. Christopher knew he still reeked of the humans' sexual odours, both inside and out, and further knew that not a one of his friends would be able to refrain from making some sort of crude comment about it; even the leaders had smirked, although they'd had too much class to say anything aloud. When he went back down to his quarters on Earth late in the afternoon, he found a bouquet of white roses sitting on his desk, delivered during his absence. The accompanying card confirmed that they were from the van de Merwes and it read, 'HOPE TO SEE YOU AGAIN SOON', with the 'SOON' underlined three times. Christopher fired the card straight into the trash, shuddering. He thought about ditching the roses too, but didn't. (They smelled too nice.)

Christopher did eventually send a note of thanks to the pair, expressing his appreciation for their 'hospitality', as was proper according to his knowledge of human social etiquette, but made sure he was always far too busy or otherwise unavailable to accept their invitations for a repeat visit over the following several days. He didn't even want to communicate with them over the phone and certainly not face to face. He just had a dreadful feeling that if they ever got him alone again, that something they'd awoken in him would come roaring back out of hiding and override all his intellect and sensibilities, leaving him helpless once more and unable to resist their sensual wiles. Christopher didn't want to experience that feeling of crazy helplessness ever again. His walk on the wild side was over. There'd be nothing but safe, predictable, loving prawn 'sex' for him from now on.

The next and last time Christopher actually saw the van de Merwes was at the sentencing hearing, which he attended only out of duty. Wikus and Tania were also both present, and although there were no seats left near Christopher himself, they managed to snag a couple which allowed them to partially face him, so that they could sneak glances at him throughout the long afternoon without arousing too much suspicion. Christopher exchanged a couple of nods, but otherwise tried to avoid eye contact with them as much as possible. Anytime he did slip up, he imagined that he could already see the gleam of lust in their covetous gazes, a tiny shining bead of spittle adorning Wikus's moustache. Towards the end, he made the mistake of looking their way at the very moment that Piet Smit was being handed his terms of punishment, thinking to offer a little moral support from afar. What he saw were Wikus and Tania grinning broadly, then, before he could look away, they puckered their lips and blew him a kiss, both of them. That was all it took to ignite a flare of heat within Christopher and make him feel, for the first time in his entire life, exposed and embarrassed about how little he really did wear when out in public. Dismayed, he tried to cross his legs to better cover himself. When that didn't work, he dropped his hands into his lap and kept them there.

All the accused who'd been convicted of the world's first-ever crimes against aliens of human-equivalency were given the maximum sentences possible—life in prison with no chance of parole. That evening, with news of the sentencing still reverberating around the globe, Christopher left the ersatz embassy he'd manned for the last time and abandoned it. All the prawn vessels within Earth's atmosphere also left and settled into geostationary orbit far, far above Johannesburg and there they paused. Humanity breathed its first small sigh of relief. It looked as though the aliens had been satisfied and the threat of warfare averted. Then the prawn leadership had Christopher issue their very last communiqué to the people of Earth, which amounted to a demand for restitution to close out their association. Starting with the Earth's moon. The prawns were taking it.

The preliminary sighs became howls of outrage—what did the aliens mean, they were taking the moon? And this business of 'harvesting' some of the other satellites and planets, what was that all about? The prawn armada, happy to oblige by showing, not telling, split off into numerous task groups and shot off on their assignments to demonstrate exactly what they meant.

What the prawns wanted to harvest was ore, millions upon millions of tonnes of ore, ore that would yield enough precious metals and gemstones and raw alloy materials to generously pay off the expenses incurred by their long trip and rescue mission and then some. The little excursions the ships had been making throughout the solar system hadn't been only for sightseeing and exploratory purposes, they'd been taking samples for just this express purpose and already knew just what they wanted and where to go for it. Mercury, Mars, the Earth's moon, Ganymede and Io, Oberon and others, all had caught their interest as likely sources for their needs. The prawns went to work, and back on Earth, observatories around the world were pressed into service to monitor this startling new development.

As developments went, it was a harsh one. The outrage was perhaps justified. No one could believe the destruction being wrought, the brutal, heedless methods the prawns used to extract their ore. There was also a certain sick-feeling relief in watching the aliens carve up and pulverize their faraway industrial targets. It could just as easily have been the Earth.

But the moon, that was the bad one. That was the one everyone could watch being whittled away, without even needing a telescope, and there wasn't a damn thing anyone could do about it except wring their hands and curse the prawns for their inventive cruelty. Over the next six weeks, the colony ships assigned to mine the moon stripped and processed approximately half of its mass, leaving behind a pockmarked hunk of rubble whose ruined face would forever remind the human race of how they'd treated the only alien visitors they'd ever known. And would no doubt ever know, period. The prawn leadership fully intended to badmouth Earth to the entire intergalactic community and get the planet blacklisted.

Christopher, whose own vessel had taken part in the moon's excavation and who'd done his share, had picked up enough bad human traits by then to find some mean pleasure in that.

THE END


End file.
